August 2018

Last fall, as the GOP and the Trump administration worked overtime to sell the American public on its package of tax cuts, Kevin Hassett, chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisors, made a bold prediction : The average American household would see their annual income increase by $4,000-$9,000 due to the legislation's business tax cuts. Hassett also said he expected to see "an immediate jump in wage growth." And while most in the GOP were hesitant to go quite as far as Hassett, the...

We are thrilled to announce the premiere of Wrestling Ghosts , a documentary about breaking the cycle of trauma, at the LA Film festival on Sept. 27th. “Incredible. Haunting and strange and beautiful and incredibly moving.” -Dan Cogan, Founder Impact Partners Wrestling Ghosts follows the epic inner journey of Kim, a young mother who, over two heartbreaking and inspiring years, battles the traumas from her past in order to create a new present and future for her and her family. In this...

Do you remember when weekly news stories of our children being traumatized, tortured and killed became the new normal? If our children had a voice and vote, which they don’t, I believe they would all ask for the right to grow up in safe homes with healthy parents, and be able to learn in high-functioning schools. Our never-ending cycle of child tragedies begs the bigger question, which we pose in our book Anna, Age Eight: who are the real monsters here? Is it the parents who inflict these...

When the history of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) prevention is written 100 years hence, we wouldn’t be surprised if the conclusion comes down on the side of technology connecting us in profound ways that leads to a compassionate society that prioritizes all its children. As someone who is often referred to as the "IT guy" on ACEs prevention projects, I love technology. But before I start gushing about the promises of technology, a sober assessment is in order, especially when it...

Boots Riley’s debut film, Sorry to Bother You, offers a renewed sense of urgency in how we respond to the racist and capitalist divides that impact us all. Satirical, dystopian, part sci-fi. Emotionally and intellectually, it’s everything we didn’t know we needed. Cassius “Cash” Green represents many unemployed young Black males looking for work and their subsequent climb to the top after they finally land a job. After getting a low-level telemarketing position, Cash learns the secret to how...

There was just one student in the Boulder Valley School District’s teen parent program last year. She graduated in May, and and the district spent the summer turning the program’s nursery into a child care center for staff . In the Englewood district just south of Denver there were no students in the teen parent program last year, and in the western Colorado city of Montrose, the long-standing charter school for pregnant and parenting teens was newly closed because of dwindling enrollment.

When Carmen Rodriguez was two years old, his grandmother would put him in a makeshift baby carrier and take him into the fields as she picked produce. Growing up, he traveled from Chicago to Texas, North Dakota and California with his migrant farmworker family, picking melons, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, and corn. The first meal he ever cooked was bean and cheese burritos, strapped to the radiator of the family car to keep them warm. His home base was a rough neighborhood in Chicago,...

Some federal employees working in science-related jobs say they've seen policy shifts in the past year that harm America's most vulnerable populations, from the reorganization of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Justice to the reported focus on "all Americans" (rather than specific risk groups, a common practice in public-health research). These results come from a survey conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group that has opposed several...

Adversity is part of life: Loved ones die. Soldiers deploy to war. Patients receive terminal diagnoses. Research on how adults deal with adversity has been dominated by studies claiming the most common response is uninterrupted and stable psychological functioning. In other words, this research suggests that most adults are essentially unfazed by major life events such as spousal loss or divorce. These provocative findings have also received widespread attention in the popular press and...

The punishment for a crime doesn’t necessarily end when the person has been released from prison. Formerly incarcerated people face multiple barriers to securing housing ( including public housin g) and employment , which can lead to homelessness. And just by virtue of being homeless—by having to sleep on a bench or take shelter under a bridge—these people may then be targeted by the police. Thus starts an unrelenting cycle, through which people are tossed back and forth between jail and the...

Sixty miles south of my home is a small municipality in New Jersey called Bordentown Township. The population is 11,367, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Two very important things happened there in 2016. One alarmed me; the other gave me hope. The first was the arrest of the town’s former police chief, Frank Nucera Jr., who had just stepped down after years on the force. Nucera was charged by the FBI with committing a federal hate crime and violating a person’s civil rights while he was...

Quality of Early Relationships determines Lifelong Health The first relationship—usually this is between the mother and her infant—has an enduring impact on all later stages of human development. This relationship which occurs has been described by Bowlby’s attachment theory, which at its core, is about how the mother helps the infant regulate emotion. The mother-infant attachment communications are essential because they directly affect the development of the brain. Dr. Allan Schore, the...